Frazier is an exemplary prose writer, and aspiring practitioners couldn’t ask for a better textbook.
A greatest-hits collection by the journalist and prolific author.
Frazier was born to be a magazine writer, quick to discern between a meaningful vignette and a subject for a long-form story. Here he gathers examples of both, originally published in venues such as the New Yorker and the Atlantic. The vignettes are everywhere, sketches that probe little-known corners of the human experience, such as a prize-winning rodeo bull rider from Kingston, New York, who didn’t have to travel far to win again at “Loretta Lynn’s Longhorn World Championship Rodeo,” held at Madison Square Garden way back in 1974. “Each bull has his own set of statistics,” Frazier writes, “just like a baseball player: how many people he’s bucked off, how many times he’s been ridden, how many times he’s made the national finals—things like that.” His visits with the plainspoken NPR commentator Kim Williams, the doyenne of Missoula, Montana, yield dozens of elegant observations, some well ahead of their time, as when she stands in Trump Tower on a visit to New York and declares, “I think someday all the rich people are going to take our resources and go live in a big, warm dome high above us somewhere.” Her takeaway: It’s inevitable, so make do with less. Among the longest pieces are a sardonic examination of life in Russia in the early years of the Putin regime, with Putin himself somewhat at a crossroads about how to celebrate the overthrow of the last tsar: “The example of, say, the civil unrest of early February 1917 may not appeal to a leader who faced widespread protests against his own autocratic rule.” It’s all highly readable, with some great turns of phrase (“Russian humor is slapstick, only you actually die”). And if you want to know how prisoners score contraband cell phones, here’s where to turn.
Frazier is an exemplary prose writer, and aspiring practitioners couldn’t ask for a better textbook.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780374603106
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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